Linda's Literary Home

Author: Linda Sue Grimes

  • Emily Dickinson’s “Distrustful of the Gentian”

    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “Distrustful of the Gentian”

    In Emily Dickinson’s “Distrustful of the Gentian,” the speaker creates a fascinating little drama to explore the melancholy the erupts in her heart at the closing of summer.

    Introduction and Text of “Distrustful of the Gentian”

    Although it seems that a very important word has been omitted from the poem, the drama continues unabated.  It would make an interesting study to add a guessed-at word and then see how it might change the outcome of the poem’s force.  I will venture the guess that the word she meant to supply referred to her mood.  

    Likely she thought, “Weary for my mood,” sounded too ordinary, too mundane, so she meant to come back and add a more dramatic term.  But then alas! she either never found the time nor the term, so it gets left double dashed, imposing a quizzical conundrum on her future audience.

    Distrustful of the Gentian

    Distrustful of the Gentian –
    And just to turn away,
    The fluttering of her fringes
    Chid my perfidy –
    Weary for my –––
    I will singing go –
    I shall not feel the sleet – then –
    I shall not fear the snow.

    Flees so the phantom meadow
    Before the breathless Bee –
    So bubble brooks in deserts
    On Ears that dying lie –
    Burn so the Evening Spires
    To Eyes that Closing go –
    Hangs so distant Heaven –
    To a hand below.

    Commentary on “Distrustful of the Gentian”

    The speaker in Dickinson’s “Distrustful of the Gentian” is lamenting the end of summer—a theme that the poet returns to again and again.  Her love of each season motivated her to address the phenomena in poem after poem.

    First Stanza:  A Mysterious Weariness

    Distrustful of the Gentian –
    And just to turn away,
    The fluttering of her fringes
    Chid my perfidy –
    Weary for my –––
    I will singing go –
    I shall not feel the sleet – then –
    I shall not fear the snow.

    The first issue that accosts a reader of this poem is that it appears the poet failed to supply the object in the prepositional phrase “for my –––” in the fifth line but instead had simply placed a longer dash placeholder.  It does seem that she intended to come back and add a word but perhaps never got around to it.  

    On her handwritten version appear along side the place-holding long dash what appear to  be the letters “a n o w,” but those letters could have been placed there by an editor.  The handwriting does not seem to be that of the poet.

    The speaker begins by professing her distrust of the gentian flower; her distrust causes her to turn from the flower.  And she says that those fluttering fringes of the gentian rebuked her own untrustworthiness, likely for her admission of distrust of the flower.  

    This mutual lack of trust between the speaker and the flower causes the speaker to become “weary,” but because she did not state the object other weariness, the reader must guess what is specifically causing the weariness.

    The speaker with this unspecified weariness claims that she will continue on, and she will do so “singing.”  This singing indicates that she will enliven her mood and keep it high through this cheerful act.  

    She then asserts that through this act of singing she will not experience the negativity of “sleet,” indicating the season of winter.  To further the winter implication, she adds that she will “not fear the snow.”

    The speaker in this little drama is fashioning her preparation for the end of nice, warm summer weather as she tries to ease herself into readying her mind and heart for the onset of a cold, hard winter.

    Second Stanza:  Losing a Favored Season

    Flees so the phantom meadow
    Before the breathless Bee –
    So bubble brooks in deserts
    On Ears that dying lie –
    Burn so the Evening Spires
    To Eyes that Closing go –
    Hangs so distant Heaven –
    To a hand below.

    The second stanza continues to find the speaker painting the end of summer with masterful strokes.  She reports that the meadow is “flee[ing],” and the bee has become “breathless” at the event.  Of course, the meadow is a simple metonymy for all that the the meadow holds in terms of green grasses, colorful flowers, and wild-life such as bees and birds.  

    All those fresh, summer colors will soon turn to a winter brown, and essentially be gone because it will have changed so much.  The meadow is thus phantom-like because its qualities will seem to become mere ghosts of themselves as they can no longer remain full-bodied as in her beloved summer.

    The speaker finds her happy summer-self dying like one who is thirsting in a desert while phantom brooks seem to bubble nearby.  The desert mirage has presented itself, and the poor traveler lies dying with the sound of a babbling water stream flowing through her field of hearing.  

    And for the eyes, those eyes that are “closing,” the spires of evening seem to burn all the more bright.  That time of day when shadows loom becomes more engulfed in darkness as those shadows loom larger in fall and winter.

    The speaker then avers that to those on earth “Heaven” seems so distant, too distant for the hand to grasp. As summer continues to fade, the speaker becomes painfully aware that the next summer is quite far off.  Indeed, it is another fall, winter, and spring away.

    The speaker has focused heavily on the sense of sight in this little drama, but she has also included the sense of sound with the image of the bee and the brook.  She also includes the act of grasping with a hand.  

    As she reaches out her hand to touch the beauty of the seasons, she finds the dying of summer a particularly poignant event; thus she has again created her little drama to play out her melancholy of losing that favored season.

  • Will I Pine Away without Thee?

    Image: Created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem

    Will I Pine Away without Thee?

    —after “Door of My Heart”

    For Thee, O my Divine Belovèd,,
    I give my heart— a window and a door.
    I throw open the window;
    I open wide the door;
    Every hour I need Thee.
    Every minute slips into
    Every hour of needing Thee.
    Morning, noon, evening,
    Night and day, night and day,
    I need Thee.
    When wilt Thou come into my heart?
    Will I pine away without Thee?

    O, my Divine Belovèd,,
    I wait with the windows and doors
    Of my heart thrown wide open for Thee—
    Come, come to me, O Belovèd,,
    Come, come to me, O Divine Belovèd.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “A sepal, petal, and a thorn”

    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “A sepal, petal, and a thorn”

    Emily Dickinson’s short poem, “A sepal, petal, and a thorn,” consists of only one cinquain, but its five lines pack a prayerful punch into its deceptive shortness.

    Introduction and Text of “A sepal, petal, and a thorn”

    Emily Dickinson’s short poem “A sepal, petal, and a thorn” begins as a riddle but concludes by identifying the speaker and subject of her narrative.  The speaker of this cinquain offers a brief description of a special environment observed by a seemingly outside observer.  However, the observer becomes clear when she is named and identified in the final surprising line.

    A sepal, petal, and a thorn

    A sepal, petal, and a thorn
    Upon a common summer’s morn –
    A flask of Dew – A Bee or two –
    A Breeze – a caper in the trees –
    And I’m a Rose!

    Commentary on “A sepal, petal, and a thorn”

    This awe-inspiring little drama demonstrates the poet’s amazing ability to observe fine details and then create finely crafted poems.

    First Movement:  The Crowds of Summer

    A sepal, petal, and a thorn
    Upon a common summer’s morn –

    The speaker begins her announcement by focusing on key elements in a special environment which include the parts of a flowering plant.  Most, if not all flowers, possess a physical part called a “sepal” or the green supporting element that holds the bloom and protects it as it keeps the flower of the plant intact.

    The speaker then adds the important part of the flower called the “petal.”  The petals conjoined make up the distinct flower itself. It provides the particular shape and coloring that each flower affords to offer its beauty to the human eye.

    The speaker then offers what at first seems to be an odd member of this group, when she adds “thorn.” Not many flowers possess thorns, but the mind of the audience is not permitted to dwell upon this odd addition, for the speaker adds the marvelous and pleasurable descriptor involving the time element for her announcement:  it is summer and the speaker frames the time as containing all that has been described, and then she places them together, “[u]pon a common summer’s morn.”

    Thus far, the speaker has offered only two parts of a flowering plant with the addition of the strange and dangerous sounding element, the thorn.  But she has mitigated her simple list by placing those flowering parts at the wonderful time of year known a summer, and further beautified the environment by making it during the early part of the day or “morn[ing].”

    Second Movement:  Unity in Rime

    A flask of Dew – A Bee or two –
    A Breeze – a caper in the trees –

    The second movement of this marvelously simple, yet complicated, narration continues the catalogue-like listing of natural elements:  dew, bee, breeze, trees.  But to her drama she has added a fantastically adept rime-scheme that holds the element fast together in an almost divine unity.

    The “dew” is held in a “flask”; thus she pronounces her creation, “[a] flask of Dew.”  A flask is a simple bottle-like container, usually associated with alcoholic beverages.  The speaker’s employment of such a container instead of “glass” or “cup” quite deliberately contributes to the intoxication of the beauty and unity of such a summer morning, which has motivated the speaker to enumerate the fine details upon which she is concentrating. 

    The second half of this line, “A Bee or two” completes the rime unification that sparks her observation, which yields the intoxication caused by the beauty of the natural elements; therefore, arises, “A flask of Dew – A Bee or two –,” whose pleasurable rime rings in the mind as it presents the image of a couple of bees hovering over a beautiful flowering plant early in the day.

    The second line of the movement presents an almost uncanny repetition of force through its image and rime as the first line:  again, the speaker has created a pleasurable rime that unifies the elements with the sparks of divine unity, “A Breeze – a caper in the trees.”  As “Dew” and “two” offered a perfect riming set, so do “Breeze” and “trees.”

    The second movement then creates a little drama that could almost stand alone because it has offered an image that implies a flower, calling it a “flash of Dew” over which hover a pair of bees, set in an area where a breeze is blowing and whipping up a “caper” in the surrounding trees.  The employment of the term “caper” offers a magically wonderful element of mischief that the speaker infuses into her drama of a simple flower.

    Third Movement:  Rose Reporting

    And I’m a Rose!

    In the final movement, the speaker announces her identity.  She is a “Rose.”  Little wonder that the accuracy and fidelity to detail have been so brilliantly portrayed; it has been the flower herself who is reporting. Unlike so many of Dickinson’s riddle poems in which she never condescends to name the subject of the riddle, this one proudly announces who the speaker is in direct terms.

    After describing her environment of finely crafted elements–sepal, petal, morn, dew, bees, breeze, trees–the speaker then affords her audience the ultimate unity by stating directly and unequivocally who she is.  With this revelation, the mystery of the “thorn” in the first line is solved.

    This masterfully crafted little drama offers the Dickinson canon one of its main features that demonstrate the ability of the poet to observe and create little masterful dramas out of her observations.  Her ability to make words dance as well as fill out images remains a staple in the Dickinson tool-kit of poetic expression.

  • O Great Christ

    Image: Created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem

    O Great Christ

    —after “Cloud-Colored Christ”

    O great Christ,
    Great Jesus the Christ—
    Come out of the darkest clouds,
    Come out of the brightest sky,
    Bend the earth to Thy desire.
    Be Thou our Guiding Light!

    Make humankind like Thyself,
    Thy worthy self.
    O great Christ,
    Great Jesus the Christ—

    Guide us in our reason,
    In our heart’s feeling,
    And in our soul,
    Be Thou our Guiding Light

  • Emily Dickinson’s “The Gentian weaves her fringes”

    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet https://www.amherst.edu/library/archives/holdings/edickinson

    Emily Dickinson’s “The Gentian weaves her fringes”

    In Emily Dickinson’s “The Gentian weaves her fringes,” the speaker metaphorically likens the end of summer to the departure of the soul of a loved one, creating a little funeral drama in a church with a final prayer offering.

    Introduction and Text of  “The Gentian weaves her fringes”

    Emily Dickinson kept the Sabbath by staying home, as she so colorfully expressed in her poem, “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church.” But while others were content to participate in the traditional church services, Dickinson created speakers who marveled in the natural surroundings to the point of uplifting those natural creatures to divine entities in the rarified spiritual air.

    As most readers know, Emily Dickinson lived a cloistered life resembling that of a monastic, earning herself the title, “Nun of Amherst.”  Her poem, “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church,” celebrates this cherished belief held by “the nun of Amherst” that merely staying home and worshipping could lead one to heaven instead of waiting for death.  

    In the “Some keep the Sabbath” poem, the speaker creates her own church with a bird serving the position of the choir director and fruit trees serving as the roof of her church.  And the sermon is preached by none other than “God,””a noted Clergyman.”

    Like the “Some keep the Sabbath” poem, “The Gentian weaves her fringes” also finds the speaker creating her own church along with a church funeral service that she employs metaphorically as the death or departure of the summer season.  The echo of a traditional prayer caps the little drama with beauty and leaves the reader in a highly spiritual atmosphere of the divine, little Dickinson created church.

    The Gentian weaves her fringes

    The Gentian weaves her fringes –
    The Maple’s loom is red –
    My departing blossoms
    Obviate parade.

    A brief, but patient illness –
    An hour to prepare,
    And one below this morning
    Is where the angels are –
    It was a short procession,
    The Bobolink was there –
    An aged Bee addressed us –
    And then we knelt in prayer –
    We trust that she was willing –
    We ask that we may be.
    Summer – Sister – Seraph!
    Let us go with thee!

    In the name of the Bee –
    And of the Butterfly –
    And of the Breeze – Amen!

    Commentary on “The Gentian weaves her fringes”

    The speaker is metaphorically likening the end of summer to the departure of the soul of a loved one, creating a little funeral drama in a church with a final prayer offering.

    First Stanza:   Observation of the Departing Blooms

    The Gentian weaves her fringes –
    The Maple’s loom is red –
    My departing blossoms
    Obviate parade.

    The speaker observes that the Gentian flower that grows billowy edges has been weaving those edges while the red maple tree remains looming overhead.  But then she reveals that she is reporting not a simple celebration of blooming plants, but instead she will be describing the departures of “blossoms.”  Those blooming flowers are departing because summer is coming to an end.

    Second Stanza:    Drama of a Church Service

    A brief, but patient illness –
    An hour to prepare,
    And one below this morning
    Is where the angels are –
    It was a short procession,
    The Bobolink was there –
    An aged Bee addressed us –
    And then we knelt in prayer –
    We trust that she was willing –
    We ask that we may be.
    Summer – Sister – Seraph!
    Let us go with thee!

    The speaker then creates a fascinating scenario calling the short summer season a “brief, but patient illness.”  Of course, it is the grieving speaker who feels the illness that her beloved summer with all of its warmth, colors, and inviting other sense pleasures will soon be departing.  Thus she is metaphorically likening the end of summer to the end of the life of a beloved friend or relative.

    And she is doing so for a very specific reason.  Just as the speaker averred in “Some Keep the Sabbath,”  she is creating a special church service.  This time it is a funeral service that includes “the Bobolink” and “an aged Bee” who offer eulogies for the departing loved one.

    The speaker then proclaims that the funeral attendees all “knelt in prayer.”  The prayer expresses the wish that the departing soul is doing so willingly. She then offers a startling remark, naming the departing one not only “Summer” but “Sister” and “Seraph.”  This departing soul is close as a sister and beloved as an angel.  Thus this speaker expresses the wish to accompany Summer on its departing journey.

    Third Stanza:  A Final Prayer Offering

    In the name of the Bee –
    And of the Butterfly –
    And of the Breeze – Amen!

    The completion of the prayer echoes the many prayers that are offered weekly in most churches.  But instead of “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,”  this speaker’s created natural church prayer pays homage to the natural creatures, Bee, Butterfly, and Breeze.  She then appends the same devotional closing found in most if not all Christian prayers—”Amen!”

  • Divine Mother’s Tiny Bee

    Divine Mother’s Tiny Bee

    —after “Blue Lotus Feet”

    My mind is a tiny bee
    Buzzing, buzzing
    The blue lotus feet
    Of my Divine Mother.

    Engrossed
    In the sacred dust of each toe,
    Gathering
    That sacred dust of each blue toe.

    The holy blue lotus toes
    Of my Divine Mother
    Like a sacred blue fragrant rose
    On each foot of my Divine Mother.

    My tiny bee mind,
    Thine infinite blue feet,
    I am Thy child,
    Thou art my Mother.

    O Divine Mother
    I shall always be
    But Thy tiny bee
    Buzzing, buzzing

    Thy blue lotus feet.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “Baffled for just a day or two”

    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “Baffled for just a day or two”

    This poem, “Baffled for just a day or two,” is one of Emily Dickinson’s most puzzling riddles, and like many of her poems, it begs multiple level interpretations from a flower in her garden to the eruption in a garden mind of a new type of poem.

    Introduction and Text of “Baffled for just a day or two”

    Depending on who is being described as “baffled” and “embarrassed,” the poem reveals a chance “encounter” with some unexpected, but likely not completely unknown entity.  Because the location is the speaker’s “garden,” a flower may be presumed.  

    But if “garden” refers to the mythological garden of the poet’s poetry, as mentioned in the poem, “There is another sky,” in which the speaker invites her brother, “Prithee, my brother, / Into my garden come!,” the strange, “unexpected Maid,” may turn out to be a poem.

    Baffled for just a day or two

    Baffled for just a day or two –
    Embarrassed – not afraid –
    Encounter in my garden
    An unexpected Maid.

    She beckons, and the woods start –
    She nods, and all begin –
    Surely, such a country
    I was never in!

    Commentary on “Baffled for just a day or two”

    Emily Dickinson’s metaphysical garden includes many varieties of flowering poems, even those that might have startled her upon first appearance.

    First Stanza:  Some Stranger in Her Garden Has Appeared

    Baffled for just a day or two –
    Embarrassed – not afraid –
    Encounter in my garden
    An unexpected Maid.

    The speaker begins with an odd remark, indicating that someone or some entity was confused and perhaps struggling to emerge, as a flower pushing itself up through the soil might do.  The entity remained in the situation for only a couple of days.  Because of its struggle, which likely looked awkward, it was “embarrassed,” but it struggled on without fear.

    This event happened in the speaker’s garden, where she “encounter[ed]” “an unexpected Maid.”  The speaker never reveals explicitly who or what this “Maid” is.  She leaves it up to the reader to take as much from her riddle/poem as possible.  And it is likely that she thinks of this poem as so deeply personal that she will remain blissfully unconcerned even if no one ever grasps her exact reference.

    Second Stanza:  From Some Hitherto Unvisited Metaphysical Plane

    She beckons, and the woods start –
    She nods, and all begin –
    Surely, such a country
    I was never in!

    This important “Maid,” who has made her appearance, then gestures enticingly, and that coaxing invitation causes the “woods” to begin moving toward her.  The “Maid” then “nods” and things begin to happen.  What begins to happen, the speaker is not divulging.

    The speaker then asserts another odd remark, saying that she “was never” in “such a country.”  That claim baffles the reader, for surely the speaker cannot be saying she was never in her garden, whether it refers to her literal, physical garden or to her figurative, metaphysical garden.

    But ah, knowing Dickinson, how mystically inclined her mind worked, her speaker could, in fact, be exaggerating because after the flower appeared, its beauty was beyond the gardener-speaker’s expectations.

    Or if the “Maid” is a poem, the speaker is revealing that the poem was so new, fresh, and profound that she feels she has never before encountered such a piece, and therefore it must come from a “country” or place in her mind/soul in which she, up to this point, has never visited.

    The poem works well on either the physical (Maid as flower) or the metaphysical (Maid as poem), as all great poetry does.  And while a reader might choose to accept the physical, readers who choose the metaphysical are likely to become more in tune with the Dickinsonian way of thinking.

    The Dickinson Mind

    Emily Dickinson was a poetic genius, as her reputation clearly affirms.  Her poems have delighted audiences since her works became widely disseminated.  Her poems reveal a mind that paid close attention to details.  The details that surrounded her in her home and the details of nature outside her home which she had the privilege of observing became her material for creating her little poetic dramas.


    However, the Dickinson mind was not content to merely describe the minutia of everyday life or even of living a New England life.  Emily Dickinson grasped early on that the world was filled with meaning.  The life she was living and the lives which all of her contemporaries were living sustained a meaning that only suggested itself to the individuals.

    But for Dickinson that suggestion remained a guiding force, urging her to know all she could know.  Her mind was a hungry, fierce animal that stalked it prey with a vengeance; it prey was that suggestion of meaning that resided in every created thing.

    God has created an untold number of things, and each and every one of those things holds untold levels of meaning.  Interestingly, it seems that only God’s things known as human beings are capable of wondering about the meaning of things, the meaning of life, the meaning of living a proper life.

    Also interesting, it also seems that only a new of those human beings have noticed that all God’s creation contains things with meaning.  Most individuals grasp the fact that things are useful, and in employing hat usefulness, reason and wonder often take a backseat.  People seem to leave the thinking of profound subjects for simply getting through another day with enough shelter, food, and raiment to sustain life.

    Emily Dickinson was of the few who take life so seriously that they contemplate, gather the fruits of their contemplations, and then create little dramas out of them.  Her life-long amazement that existence existed motivated her to continue creating her little garden and her world that thrived under “another sky.”

    The Dickinsonian mind is itself a thing of wonder.  Her depth of peering into something so simple as a flower remains a curiosity.  Her poems are testimonies to the amazing quality of her thinking.  While her depth and force may be especially extraordinary, they, nevertheless, are part and parcel of every human mind.

    All human minds possess the same capabilities that the Dickinsonian mind possessed.  The only difference is in their execution.  Dickinson gave in to urge to know everything she could about everything she encountered.  Any limiting factors standing in the way of her progress became mountains that she gladly climbed, and at the top of each mount, she sat gleefully composing the details of her journey upward.

  • My Secret Soul

    Image: Created by Gemini inspired by the poem

    My Secret Soul

    —after “At Thy Feet”

    In my secret soul grows a garden where my secret Belovèd
    Nurtures enchanted flowers of melody with the grand AUM…

    Buds of beauty dance and sway as I play the harmonium
    And sing my soul songs only for Thy listening presence.

    Listen to my soul songs, O Divine Belovèd,
    Listen to my songs of joy divine and love everlasting!

    Hiding from the glaring eye of the world,
    I make my magical noise only for Thy listening presence—

    Far from the bustle of the deceptions
    And delusions of maya.

    Listen to my soul songs, O Divine Joy!
    Listen to my magic songs, O Playful One!

    I hear Thee AUMing throughout my brain,
    Inside my heart, within my mind!

    I wait listening, listening, listening with my whole being!
    I wait listening, listening, listening in my secret soul!

  • Emily Dickinson’s “I would distal a cup”

    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “I would distal a cup”

    Emily Dickinson’s “I would distal a cup” mimics a toast to a departing friend.  It appears in a letter to newspaper editor Samuel Bowles, a family friend.

    Introduction and Text of “I would distil a cup”

    The text of Emily Dickinson’s “I would distal a cup” in prose form appears in a letter to Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, the most influential newspaper in New England around 1858.  The letter begins with the writer thanking Mr. Bowles for sending her a pamphlet.  She expresses uncertainly that he is the actual sender but thanks him in case he is.

    The rest of the letter finds the writer communicating her famous claim that her friends are her “estate,” and celebrating the notion that friendship enlivens her, keeping her on her toes.  The letter bears the date August 1858 and she remarks that the workers are gathering the “second Hay.”  

    Thus the summer season is winding down.  It is at this point in the letter that she states, “I would distil a cup, and bear to all my friends, drinking to her no more astir, by beck, or burn, or moor!”

    Apparently, Dickinson thought enough of this sentence to include it as a full-fledged poem in one of the many  fascicles that Thomas H. Johnson later edited for publication in his The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, the groundbreaking work that restored Dickinson’s poems to their original forms.  

    In the letter, Dickinson’s sentence-turned-poem seems to jump up out the verbiage as a toast at a gala dinner party, wherein one would rise, raise a cup, and offer the toast to one being recognized.

    I would distil a cup

    I would distil a cup,
    And bear to all my friends,
    Drinking to her no more astir,
    By beck, or burn, or moor!

    Commentary on “I would distal a cup”

    In a letter to Samuel Bowels, Emily Dickinson puts on display her colorful, chatty conversational ability, including this original prose-statement, which later became a finished poem.

    First Movement:  Creating, Rising, and Offering

    I would distil a cup,
    And bear to all my friends,

    The speaker, as if rising to offer a toast at some gathering of friends, imparts that she wishes to offer a toast “to all [her] friends.”  The drink is likely a fine whiskey; thus the speaker conflated the manufacture of the drink with her lifting the cup.  

    She makes herself more important to the creation of the drink than she, or anyone offering a toast, would deserve.  But the exaggeration simply implies her devotion to her friends, who are by the way, her “estate.”  Not only is she offering a toast, but she is also creating the drink in order to offer it.

    Then after the speaker had created this distilled beverage, she lifts her cup and bears its contents to all of her friends.  At the point that poem appears in her letter to Bowles, she had made it clear that she can make chatty conversation.  

    She has claimed that she wishes to be forgiven for hoarding her friends.  She has surmised that those who were once poor have a very different view of gold than those who have never suffered poverty.

    The letter writer even invokes God, saying He does not worry so much as we or else he would “give us no friends, lest we forget him.”  Playing on the expression, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” she compares what one might anticipate in “Heaven” as opposed to what one experiences on earth and finds the latter more appealing.

    However, the speaker then abruptly tells Bowles that, “Summer stopped since you were here,” after which she mourns the loss of summer with several acerbic witticisms.  She offers Bowles some paraphrases from her “Pastor,” who has dismissed humanity as nothing but a “Worm.”  

    Then she poses the question to Bowles:  “Do you think we shall ‘see God’?”  This abrupt inquiry likely startled Bowles, which is no doubt the writer’s purpose.  But then she moves on to the image of “Abraham” “strolling” with God “in genial promenade,” seemingly answering her own startling question.

    Second Movement:  As Summer Abandons the Streams and Meadows

    Drinking to her no more astir,
    By beck, or burn, or moor!

    After having distilled the fine liquor, poured it into her cup, she lifts it and offers her toast to the one who is in the process of departing—her beloved summer.  The summer season is no longer “astir” in the streams or on the meadows.  

    She employs the colorful terms “beck” and “burn” (bourne) to refer to streams of water.  And then she refers to fields, heaths, or meadows as “moor,” likely also for its colorful, exotic texture.

    Immediately after the toasting sentence in the letter, the letter writer abruptly bids Mr. Bowles, “Good night,” but she still has more to say and proceeds to say it.  She then claims that “this is what they say who come back in the morning.”  

    She seems to be identifying with summer who is saying good-bye but only to return “in the morning.”  But her certainty that “Confidence in Daybreak modifiers Dusk,” allows her to accept the pair of opposites that continually blight her world.

    The speaker has difficulty even saying good-night or good-bye to a friend once she has opened the conversation. But she knows she must wind down, just a summer has done; thus she wishes blessings for Bowles’ wife and children, even going to far as to send kisses for lips of the little ones.  

    She then tells Bowles that she and the rest of the Dickinson family remain eager to visit with him again.  And she will dispense with “familiar truths,” for his sake.

    Emily Dickinson and at the Exotic

    Emily Dickinson’s penchant for exoticisms likely enamored her of some of the more cryptic expressions placed in her letters.  That penchant allowed her be so cheeky as to select certain expressions and later present them in a fascicle as a poem.  

    It also explains her employment of terms for ordinary nouns such a field, river, creek, or meadow.  She kept her dictionary handy and made abundant use of it. Luckily, her intuitive perception and ability with language kept her from suffering the clownish terminology often detected by users of a thesaurus.

    Image b: Samuel Bowles – Emily Dickinson Museum

  • Thou Hast Opened My Blind Eyes

    Image: Created by Grok inspired by the poem

    Thou Hast Opened My Blind Eyes

    —after “Listen, Listen, Listen”

    Thou hast opened my eyes to treachery
    And grown me a shield against her.
    She groped through my heart chambers
    Leaving barbs that pricked with each beat,
    But Thou hast swept them away,
    Swept each chamber clean!

    Thou hast opened my blind eyes;
    Now, I open my voice
    And sing to Thee my songs
    That Thou hast given me.
    O, hear my songs,
    Hear my songs to Thee:
    I can never forget, never forsake Thee,
    O Great Sweeper of my heart!